


dependable

by Skyuni123



Series: AR fics [3]
Category: Alex Rider (TV 2020), Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, I will make this pairing happen so help me god, M/M, Pizza
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:21:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24805354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyuni123/pseuds/Skyuni123
Summary: the pizza scene, but a little... spicier, shall we say.-set in the tv series, season 1 episode 3
Relationships: Tom Harris/Alex Rider
Series: AR fics [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1792810
Comments: 12
Kudos: 137





	dependable

He didn’t order a pizza.

Alex briefly wonders if it’s Smithers, dropping him off some kind of other useless toy to play with - Backstreet Boys,  _ really?  _ \- but then he opens the door and it’s  _ Tom. _

Tom, beautiful idiot Tom, who’s biked out to the middle of nowhere to deliver him a… pizza?

“What you doing here?” He hisses, because if any of the Friends catch him, his cover is shot. That, and they’d probably kick Tom off their property for being too common or something.

Tom doesn’t answer, just flips open the lid of the pizza box. There is, genuinely, a pizza inside.

Alex frowns. Dumbly, because he’s still a little taken aback, he says, “It’s got anchovies, I hate anchovies.”

“They’re all you deserve.” Tom says, and he’s not smiling, not at all. 

Alex drags him inside the house and shuts the door.

So, he basically explains it all. MI5 can get angry all they like, but this is  _ Tom,  _ and this is his best friend, and he’s just too tired and just too done with the Friends to keep quiet anymore. 

He picks the anchovies off his pizza as he talks, because Tom might have bought the thing, but they’re still really gross.

“So, your uncle was a spy?” Tom asks. He looks incredulous, really, which is fair enough. The whole thing seems ludicrous and Alex is  _ living  _ it.

“Yeah.”

“You should have said.”

“I know.” Alex tries a smile, just a little. Tom still seems a little frosty, and for good reason, but hopefully he’s beginning to thaw out. “Sorry. I completely deserve the anchovies.”

“Yeah, you do.” Tom doesn’t smile back. He looks over at him, consideringly. “You know I hate them too, right? I have to suffer because you’re a dick.” 

Alex snorts. That’s  _ so  _ Tom. Ignoring the big crisis, honing down on the little things. It’s refreshing. “How’d you find me?”

“Jack told me. She says hi.” Tom sighs. “So. Fake car crash, fake police on your doorstep, fake Alex. Jack’s scared about you, you know.”

And that hurts. Alex doesn’t ever want Jack to be scared. Jack  _ shouldn’t  _ be scared. “She doesn’t need to be. It’s not like what Ian did, it’s just looking around a school.” 

Tom snorts this time. “So why’d they have to beat you up? Threaten your family?”

“They didn’t beat me up. I hit my head.” But he can’t lie. Not to Tom. “...When they kidnapped me.”

And he stumbles over it too, like a child. It’s dumb -  _ so  _ dumb - to chastise himself for that, but it reminds him of the pressure he’s under. It reminds him of the room, too. 

The water.

He mightn’t have shown it, but he hadn’t been unaffected by it all.

Tom looks shocked. Horrified, perhaps. He springs up. “Where the hell is their office? I’ll go in and I’ll- I’ll-”

“Don’t.” Alex reaches for his wrist, pulls him back down to the bed. The pizza box shakes between them, ominously. “What the hell do you think you’ll do, mate?”

He’s touched, though. Genuinely. 

“I’ll punch at least one spy.” Tom says, and he looks like he’ll genuinely do it, mind. Idiot. 

Beautiful, wonderful idiot. 

“They’d lock you up for like a thousand years or something.” Alex says. He’s still got his hands on Tom’s arm. He lets go, before it all gets a bit too close to home.

“Still do it though.” Tom turns to him, looks him over in a way that’s very reminiscent of Jack. “You’re good now?”

“Yeah.” He’s got a tiny scar in his hairline that no-one will ever notice, and he’ll always flinch at first if he goes out in the rain, but he’s  _ fine.  _

“You, Alex Rider, are a liar.” Tom declares. He pulls off his stupid pizza delivery hat and tosses it to the bed, his mad curls springing free. The pizza box, once again, rocks ominously. “A terrible liar. How on earth did you become a spy?”

“I didn’t exactly have a choice.” And _ that  _ hits too close to home.

Tom springs up again, once again genuinely furious all of a sudden. “Fuck. I just- those  _ bastards. _ ”

Alex reaches for him again, catches him by the hand this time. He pulls him back down to the bed, makes Tom face him. “Not that I’m not very grateful, but I’m not going to let you fight the entirety of MI5. It’s fine, Tom. I’ll just be looking around a school. Nothing dangerous.”

Tom grumbles but settles back down, their hands still joined. “That’s what they say in all the movies. And then, surprise, you’re tied to a chair with a hot Russian assassin trying to seduce you into giving her all your secrets.”

Alex snorts, the idea briefly dancing across his mind and then disappearing just as quickly. “Fuck off. This is nothing like the movies.”

“Except for the fact you’re an actual  _ spy. _ ”

“Yeah, but in the movies we’d never be having this conversation.” James Bond didn’t often stop for a chat and a pizza in his films, even in the good ones.

“And in the movies…” Tom begins, looking sly, “You wouldn’t still be holding my hand.”

Oh shit, he hadn’t even realised. 

Alex pulls back, quickly, just as Tom grabs his hand. He looks embarrassed. “I… didn’t say stop.”

“But I’m- you’re-” Alex starts, an odd pounding starting up somewhere in his ribs. It’s hard to understand, hard to get, but it doesn’t seem… wrong. His skin feels hot.

“I am  _ way  _ too into the X-Men to be a straight man, Alex.” Tom drops his hand, leans in towards him. He licks his lips, “Is this- Can I-”

“Yeah.” Alex replies, a little breathlessly, because his heart’s pounding out of his ears and he doesn’t quite know what’s going on, isn’t in the mood to reevaluate his sexuality or his friendship right now - he just  _ wants- _

And Tom kisses him.

It’s weird, a little - he’s only kissed girls before, at parties, had all the drunken fumbles everyone his age has had, but Tom is  _ Tom,  _ his best mate, there and dependable and very, very real. 

They break apart for a second, and Alex doesn’t even know how his hands got in Tom’s hair, but he likes the feeling, wants more of it. They press their foreheads together.

“You’re not going to punch me, right?” Tom asks, and it’s a joke, but it’s also not, not really.

Alex is about as far away from anger as it’s possible to be right now. “Nah.” He smirks. “I think you’re alright.”

“Good.”

And then they’re kissing again, furious and ridiculous and not very principled, but it feels good all the same. Alex doesn’t know what he wants, doesn’t know how far he wants things to go, doesn’t know what he’s going to think when he’s lying in bed later, he’s just  _ feeling,  _ when-

He kneels forward and definitely puts a knee in the pizza. The box tips and falls onto his floor, anchovies spreading far and wide.

That kills the mood, a little, despite what his general  _ everything  _ is feeling.

“Fuck.” Alex says, looking at the floor. 

“Yeah, fuck.” Tom says, and he’s breathless too, and flushed. It’s… pretty hot, actually.

He also has definitely not noticed the anchovies.

Alex licks his lips, feels the warmth, feels it all, and… looks back to the floor. “Anchovies.”

“What?” Tom says, very obviously not paying attention.

“Thomas.” Alex says, very obviously and deliberately. “I am very aware I’m going to have to reevaluate a few things, and I would very much like to do the kissing thing again, but right now - anchovies.”

Tom blinks, looking at the floor. “Shit.”

They pick up the anchovies.

(And the kissing does happen again.)

**Author's Note:**

> hit me up on the [ tumblr ](http://eph-em-era.tumblr.com). i Very much take prompts for this fandom!


End file.
